Restoring rapid natural bimanual typing with a neuroprosthesis after paralysis.

A neuroprosthesis decoding finger movements enables bimanual QWERTY typing at 22 words per minute with 1.6% error in individuals with paralysis.

• Why it matters: Restoring natural typing speeds is crucial for improving communication for people with paralysis, addressing a significant gap in current brain-computer interface technologies.
• What they did: Researchers developed an intracortical brain-computer interface that decodes attempted finger movements using only 30 calibration sentences and enhances sentence accuracy with a 5-gram language model, tested on two clinical trial participants.
• The result: The neuroprosthesis achieved typing speeds comparable to able-bodied individuals, surpassing existing motor decoding methods, and offers an intuitive, familiar communication method for those with impaired speech.